Investigative Documentaries and Undercover Reporter

Archive for the ‘BLOG’

March 18th – will be a year since chef Claudia Lawrence went missing. I will be conducitng a review of the case and attempting to highlight it to generate more public tip offs to get to the bottom of this mystery. If you can help please email me Donalreporter@gmail.com. Police are treating the investigation into her disappearance as one of suspected murder.On Friday, a North Yorkshire Police spokesman said the force had received a number of calls after the programme.The spokesman said: ”Following last night’s appeal on BBC Crimewatch, in excess of 30 calls were received by officers investigating Claudia’s disappearance.

”A potentially significant lead is being investigated; however, we are unable to give any further details at this stage due to operational reasons.”

Friends and family of Miss Lawrence were gathering in the centre of York today for a special ”awareness day” on the eve of her 36th birthda

Your health care is a personal issue to you and your doctors. But we have been receiving reports of hospitals seemingly, selling access to your treatment records – and patients receiving relevant private and homeopathic treatment offers in the post just days after. Strange – an accident – well we are investigating. Let us know your story – your experience – has this happened to you. . Have you received unwanted advertisements through the post for health products after you’ve been to the hospital? Did you think the timing was a little bit suspicious? Or perhaps you were grateful for the introduction to something that’s helped with your symptoms. Let us know or email donal@bbc.co.uk .

Here is what one patient told us: I don’t think it’s right that these people should send literature of this sort of material through the post. For instance, who gets hold of this material? The grandchildren say: what’s this granddad? Have you got cancer? And all this sort of thing. I think it’s an infringement of privacy that they can send that to a private address full stop.. Email donal@bbc.co.uk

Does Donal know of the huge scam that is “Shimmering White”, “Dazzle White”, “Ultifreshwell” (to mention just a few?) These people are scamming thousands of people in USA, Australia, UK and god knows where else out of obscene amounts of money and seem to be getting away with it. have had to cancel bank cards and accounts (me included). Just take a look at the Ultifreshwell website to see pages of irate victims’ comments! Apparently it is the biggest internet scam ever – thought he might be interested!! – GOT THAT! and have warned ITV viewers to beware of the teeth whitenening scam. Just don’t sign up Folks!

I do think you could make a good report on the way that A4E is operating, in the delivery of the New Deal Scheme.To date I have been on this since 30/10/2009 and have witnessed staff ranting at all. In one A&E I have seen one male staff member F-ing & blinding about the state of the Gents. All in front of ladies too. THIS IS GOOD – ANY MORE CASES ANYONE? THANKS DONAL

PLEASE DONATE TO HAITI The country of Haiti is in turmoil. We can all help. Common people & businesses from around the world are helping to provide financial assistance.

According to Matt Fleeger, an oil executive who donated over 7 million USD to the relief mission, “whatever bad situation you may have ever endured, it’s nothing compared to the death, disease and damage in Haiti”.

Hi I am just watching “worlds most dangerous cities” I have lived in Cape Townmost of my life. My husband is a drug counselor and has been working with addicts in Cape Town and we have just recently moved onto a farm outside of Cape Town and are now running a halfway house for ex prisoners. I have to be honest and say that even though we have been into some of the cities worst places and live with murders, rapists etc I have never been worried about my safety. My husband is a pastor and for some reason the people here have great respect for pastors and maybe that is what has protected us. Cape Town needs your kind of programe to hopefully make a difference. For all our problems we still live in one of the most beautiful places in the world and after all it is home. Keep up the good work!

Please feel free to sign this Petition to support the work to get Truth&Justice4All!

Please also forward this email to all of your friends, and contacts that supports the aim to get the truth out in the open, so that true Justice can and will be done!

In cases when the Murderer/s are still walking free we must all help so that the case will be reopen and thoroughly investigated, based upon the evidence there are , and the lack of evidence.

Right now there are several people that is devastated, both the family and friends of the murdered woman Margaret Irvine, who needs to know the truth so that true justice will be done!

The family and friends of Brendan Dixon, who has fought for years to find the truth so that they can clear Brendans name, and for Brendan that is living in a nightmare, only with the hope that his dedicated family, supporters and friends can find the truth so that real justice can be done.

. This week we talk to two former Mossad spies about how they were recruited, their training and their views on the current debate about the involvement of Mossad in the murder of the Hamas gun buyer in Dubai. We also challenge the Government about its drugs policy and NICE in relation to MS medicines. Enjoy the show.

Who would have thought it? The redtops favourite hate figure – has taken to the ice and the nations have taken her to their hearts. Heather Mills now has a growing fan club celebrating her extraordinary performance on Dancing On Ice and I am proud to say that I am card-carrying member.

I watch staggered as she took to the ice on week one and stunned everyone with her ability to skate. There is no hiding place on the tiny ice rink in the TV studio, and as a test of character and physical endurance there are few tougher. “Oh my God the woman can skate and bloody hell she is better than most of the others” I thought. I know the pain of this sport and just how excruciating it is and I have seen plenty of action and face quite a few challenges of my own – but on one leg – that is simply remarkable.

Few gave Heather a hope in hell of surviving even week one among the 13 eclectic stars of stage and screen and yet against all the odds and even her most optimistic ambitions – she is still there and hanging on.

Behind the scenes hardened cameramen have had tears in their eyes as they witnessed the struggles she undergoes in practice. These are a crusty lot but they have come over “all emotional” while seeing her struggle and suffer mostly while the cameras are off.

In the bar, after the show, the technicians, soundmen and producers gather for drinks with the celebrity contestants and their guests and are quietly moved by what they witnessing.

“You got to give it to the girl she is made of steel” one told me. Another said, “ We seen it all but to watch her handle the training and the stress without complaint is a very humbling experience.”

I know over the years this show has had their fair share of difficult divas of both sexes who could pull a tantrum at the drop of a sequin but that is not what the ‘back stage’ boys are saying about Heather Mills.

Countless times on the street people stop me to say how bemused they are about her performance and progress. “ To be frank I was not a fan but she has grown on me and you can’t help but being impressed”, one told me. Another said ‘its all about the journey and no one has a better story to tell than Heather. She is an inspiration to me’, I was told. In the sixty of so celebs who have signed on the show – hers is the most extraordinary.

I met Heather for the first time after her debut performance on the ice. And she looked tired. That nervous energy had evaporated and now she was only on adrenalin. “I am just working hard and want to enjoy it as much as I can week to week”. There was no outward ambition just a quiet determination. This was a different person from the one I had read about.

This week I talked to her about this. “In all the hubris about the split Joe public was only ever very polite and supportive to me.” But the funny thing is about this show that she has discovered is that you may have been married to a Beetle or helped over 400,000 amputees and landmine victims but “all anyone wants to talk to me about is the ice skating.”

Make no mistake this is a hard sport to learn with two legs. It is inconceivable that someone could embark upon this adventure on one and still do so with such skill.

Privately she admits to great discomfort and pain with her prosthetic leg “I don’t want any sympathy for my situation but I want to people who have lost a limb like me to know that life doesn’t stop it just changes”. It is perverse that some commentators might think a lost limb is an advantage in a ice dance/popularity contest but that is the odd place where Heather Mills finds herself. “ I can only do what I do. I get up every morning at five. Do my paperwork, the emails and then drive two hours to training. I do two or three hours on the ice and then I rest. I want to do more but they wont let me”, she told me.

Rarely does anyone ,outside the Physiotherapist, Sharon, see her stump without its sock. But this week one coach saw it and was very upset. Her leg stump is bruised and red raw from the exertions on the ice. “I never knew”, the coach said.

This is a sight and side that no one at home sees but which is the spit and sawdust of Paralympics Sports and her everyday life for Heather as a novice ice-skater. Make no mistake there have been plenty of crying prima donna and moaning prima donal’s on this show – but Mills is not one of those. She is a one off and on the ice you simply cannot take your eyes off her.

She has underplayed her enormous disability and in a show where even a bruise is celebrated as a hindrance to performance ( I once sported the biggest bruise ever seen on Dancing On Ice) it is beyond belief that she is managing so well. Her partner Matt Evers told me ‘ this girl does not stop. She simply never says no. She may not be able to do it but will say lets try this way. And that is remarkable”, he says. Matt, a part-time actor ( he appeared the ‘greatest sporting movie ever – ‘Blades of Glory’ with Will Ferral) told me “ this woman is going to surprise a lot of people. She may not win the competition but she will win their respect. She has mine, completely.”

Heather lost part of her left leg after being hit by a Police motorbike in 1993.

“”I just am doing this as a challenge. I am doing it for my daughter (Beatrice) to make her proud” Heather told me.”. This morning “, she said , I was talking to a little girl who lost her leg to meningitis and she asked me, if I could do Dancing On Ice when I grow up” why not I said”. Why not indeed. That was Thursday evening. I had left a message for Heather to phone me about this piece. I was at a tap dancing class with my eldest Allegra (7) and watched her dance while on the phone. While chatting I thought I would be proud to have my daughter take inspiration from Heather. This is a story that should be told and celebrated.

I hugely admire her and I recognize from the inside out exactly how brutal her journey must be and mine was on two legs. From beginner to Olympic Trainer camp, from zero to hero – can we be witnessing the re-invention of Heather Mills.

There is no PR guru or management team at work here just one woman, one leg and her blades of Glory and that may be all she needs. Good on you girl!

This week we are looking at teenagers and drugs and at how the dealers are bringing the sales to the school gates. If you know a dealer selling to teenagers and schoolchildren – let me know what you know, tell your story to us and we can help – or maybe you have an opinion on this – again let us know. The email is donal@bbc.co.uk. Remember we build our programme on your views and opinions – what you tell us counts and we can make it matter.

And don’t foget I am still trawling for suggestions on how to beat online fraud. So let me know about all your fixes, band-aids and tricks to fool the frausters and to protect you the consumer.his is a huge problem costing consumers billions every year. What are your stories of being ripped off – online. Do let me know? A lot of the scams are coming from Russia and we look at the problems of investigating the master hackers there.The scale of the problem is simply huge and this is threatening the very integrity and security of ecommerce – These are the very real concerns – we want your stories and suggestions for solving the internet security crisis! Do let us know your thoughts – just email donal@bbc.co.uk. Catch the stories that matter to you at 7.30pm onBBC Radio Five Live this Sunday.

The Government have announced major changes to the visa system following several reports on the The Donal MacIntyre show. The reports by the programme team forced the Government to admit that the system was failing and needed to tighten up. Click here for the full report. On Last nights show we revealed the latest phenomenon of steroid abuse among teenagers. The latest figures say that up to 23,000 young men have admitted to using drugs. This is causing major concerns with significant health problems associated with the abuse of steroids. The new trend is not for sports success but vanity purposes. I am looking at the rise in the use of steroids among teenage girls for another investigation. If you have any knowledge of this trend please contact me on donalreporter@gmail.com.

In an extraordinary interview with Donal MacIntytre for BBC Radio 5 Live on Sunday 11 October, a former Royal Military Police (RMP) investigator claims there are hundreds of cases of abuse by British soldiers, involving death and serious injury, of Iraqi civilians which have never been dealt with or have been covered up. He claims the interests of the military are taking precedence over the interests of justice and that the Royal Military Police are out of their depth in Iraq.

Describing the allegations of abuse the former RMP investigator says: “I’ve seen documentary evidence that there were incidents running into the hundreds involving death and serious injury to Iraqis where the chain of command of the army had decided that the circumstances did not warrant a Royal Military Police investigation… and it’s of great concern that amongst those there will have been undoubtedly some very suspicious deaths and serious injuries that were never properly investigated.” He also says: “the interests of justice [are] being pushed to one side in order to serve the interests of the chain of command of the Royal Military Police and the wider army.”

He adds the military chain of command make it difficult for the RMP to operate independently by not providing resources or denying access to prevent investigations; claiming investigators who don’t toe the party line would be overlooked for promotion and receive an “adverse report”.

Talking about the Baha Mousa case, an Iraqi civilian whose death in British custody is currently the subject of a public enquiry, he says: “[it] was a murder investigation on a plate… and amazingly this investigation was closed down or put in the waiting tray for a whole year.”

He says: “the whole system of military justice is flawed… and there is a very high risk that there are other Baha Mousa’s out there because of the number of incidents that were not investigated… at all by the Royal Military Police, let alone an ineffective investigation.”

When asked about his reasons for speaking out about alleged malpractice and why he left the Military Police, he replies: “I feel that I belonged for too long to an organisation that wasn’t seeking out the truth… I believe that I was serving in something that was party to covering up quite serious allegations of torture and murder… and other investigations where the consequences could have been quite serious for the suspects, and where there are large numbers of victims, who have not received justice either.”

In a statement responding to the allegations, the Ministry of Defence denied that there is evidence of systemic failure or interference within the RMP: “The RMP is subject to regular and exhaustive inspection by national bodies such as the Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary. This provides the assurance that the RMP has the capability, capacity and competence to conduct investigations into serious crime. We must also remember that over a hundred thousand of our personnel served in Iraq and, with the exception of a few individuals, they have performed to the highest standards under extraordinarily testing conditions there.”

About

Donal MacIntyre is an investigative journalist, specialising in hard hitting investigations, undercover operations and television exposes. He has won praise for his courage, and campaigning zeal particularly his consistent work in the area of care homes for the elderly and the learning disabled.